I'm going to hate Sensei in the morning.

Sensei has set up a training space in his basement. Today I went over for a little under two hours to go over my katas. Plus a little heavy bag training, mostly to see if I get faster when I'm tired (answer: no - but I don't get slower either). I feel like we accomplished a lot, but I am completely wrung. There's a huge difference between two hours in the dojo with all the other students, usually with some teaching intersperced, and two hours directly under Sensei.

Overall both I and Sensei are reasonably pleased. My kicks seem to have achieved a good speed (I was getting audible snap from my yoga pants, which seems a fair accomplishment). My hands are still lagging. They seem to move faster in combinations, but still not fast enough even then. Outside of that, most of the corrections are minor - improvements rather than corrections per se. The only kata he really panned was Kusanku Sai, panned for lack of energy (it was the very last kata we worked on). It suffered for it's position, but also just for sheer lack of confidence in it. I know the kata, but my gut doesn't believe that I know the kata, so I hesitate, and it shows.

Tomorrow we head off for the family reunion. I'm bringing my weaponry, and I'm afraid my various relations are just going to have to put up with me doing my practice. It's looking like the end of August (somewhere between the 21st and the 30th) is it, and I can't afford to miss the days.

Unfortunately the reunion does not come with available organ. My teacher (and our church organist) will be out of town the Sunday following the reunion (I.e. in two weeks). Since neither of us reserve organists is quite up to the job right now, we're splitting duties. The other guy is playing the hymns and service music, and I'm playing prelude, offertory, and postlude. Which is great, except that only one of those (the prelude) is in decent shape to play right now. The offertory is rough and slow, though coming along. The postlude is in lousy shape (Hey, I've only been working on it for a week!), fortunately, it's only got three measures that are truly problematical. If I had the full two weeks to practice, I'd be pretty confidant. Unfortunately, I'm only going to get six days from now, and that's much less confidence-inspiring.

Deep breath. For the reunion itself, I'm going to try not to worry - or at least only worry about karate, since I can do something about that. I'll just have to practice my fingers off once I'm back. It's only four pages of music. I can perfect four pages of music in a week, right?

I'll see everyone (in a manner of speaking) in a week!